Photo: Jakob Ebrey Photography
Sainteloc Racing’s Theophile Nael was fastest in Formula Regional Middle East practice at Dubai Autodrome, where he had a new team-mate.
The car previously driven by Lorenzo Castillo is being piloted by Jakob Bergmeister this weekend. The 19-year-old German came fourth in Euroformula last year as a part-timer, taking one win.
Evans GP has added a third car for Alex Sawer, the Vietnamese youngster who had a points-free FRegional Europe campaign in 2024 but was seventh in Chinese Formula 4 after winning twice across his two outings, and Pinnacle Motorsport has made two changes.
Replacing Jesse Carrasquedo Jr and Giovanni Maschio at the team are Yuanpu Cui and Hiyu Yamakoshi. Mercedes-AMG Formula 1 junior Cui steps up from F4, where he has won in the British and Chinese championships, while Yamakoshi was third in Italian F4 last season with two victories.
The most high-profile addition to the grid is James Hedley, who has replaced Jaden Pariat at Akcel GP by PHM Racing.
Hedley came fifth in British F4 two seasons in a row, racking up eight wins, then has spent nearly three full seasons in GB3. He came 17th in his rookie campaign, won twice en route to sixth in the 2023 standings then drove for three different teams and dropped to 15th in the points table last year. Between rounds he made cameos in Eurocup-3 and the FIA Formula 3 Championship.
Mumbai Falcons’ Freddie Slater was comfortably fastest in the first test session, with a 0.345-second gap to team-mate Rashid Al Dhaheri in second place. Seven drivers got within a second of his 1m54.668s benchmark, and just 0.036s split ART Grand Prix’s points leader Evan Giltaire and Nael in third and fourth.
Laptimes were far slower in session two, and after failing to set a representative laptime earlier in the day a 1m56.342s put R-ace GP’s Ugo Ugochukwu on top of the timesheet. Pinnacle’s Ernesto Rivera was 0.195s slower than him in second, then there was a gap of 0.871s to R-ace’s Enzo Deligny in third.
Cui was the only other driver within a second of Ugochukwu, but the top four did not factor near the top in the test’s overall classification. Ugochukwu jumped up from 27th to 12th, while Rivera and Cui were each demoted a spot to 13th and 14th.
After the top two, the next best driver to improve their pace was Bergmeister. He was a second slower than Ugochukwu in fifth, and climbed one spot in the overall order to 18th.
The half-hour practice session took place in the afternoon, and with a rubbered in track the pace got faster again.
Nael was marginally slower than in testing, but his 1m55.134s lap still was enough to lead the way. Slater was second with a 1m55.327s, and Ugochukwu improved to 1m55.344s in third.
Giltaire was 0.4s off the top in fourth, then next up were Al Dhaheri and Rivera. Cui was the best newcomer in 12th, and Sawer continued his pace struggles from testing as he was nearly seven seconds slower than Nael and became the only driver not to set a sub-two minute lap during the day.
Results round-up
Pre-event testing
1 Freddie Slater Mumbai Falcons 1m54.668s
2 Rashid Al Dhaheri Mumbai Falcons +0.345s
3 Evan Giltaire ART Grand Prix +0.407s
4 Theophile Nael Sainteloc Racing +0.443s
5 Taito Kato ART Grand Prix +0.646s
6 Kanato Le ART Grand Prix +0.669s
7 Enzo Deligny R-ace GP +0.807s
8 Jin Nakamura R-ace GP +0.882s
9 Akshay Bohra R-ace GP +1.286s
10 Brando Badoer PHM Racing +1.324s
Free practice
1 Nael 1m55.134s
2 Slater +0.193s
3 Ugo Ugochukwu R-ace GP +0.210s
4 Giltaire +0.402s
5 Al Dhaheri +0.536s
6 Ernesto Rivera Pinnacle Motorsport +0.581s
7 Kato +0.608s
8 Nakamura +0.711s
9 Deligny +0.808s
10 Le +0.867s